A CITADEL THAT BRIDGES A GORGE AND THE YEARS

If you never visited the Costa del Sol before its present incarnation you can still imagine it: the rocky bluffs overlooking the ocean, the scattered castle ruins, the Spanish fishermen cleaning the day's catch on the stony beach. Today, however, the horizon is speckled with silhouetted cranes, and where there are no high-rises there are billboards announcing to English-speaking investors the terms for the latest urbinizacion (planned housing development). You might be in Atlantic City or Miami Beach or any American resort paved in concrete.

If some of the life and culture have been wrung out of the coast, the same cannot be said of the Andalusian countryside, which lies a short drive north from Marbella on Highway 44. Within minutes of the coast, Spain emerges from hibernation. The road, which was recently widened, curves into the mountains through a beautiful and rugged terrain and ends at the gates of Ronda, a town that has resisted change for centuries. The drive takes little more than an hour. The scene of epic battles between the Moors and Christian followers of King Ferdinand, Ronda was also briefly home to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a man who sought to live a rootless, nomadic existence but succumbed to the enticements of this hilltop town. During one of his restless sojourns, the poet stopped for three months in a room on the third floor of the Hotel Reina Victoria. The room is now preserved as a Rilke museum (surely one of the smaller museums in Europe), complete with manuscripts, first editions, photographs and a framed copy of Rilke's hotel bill.

Visitors can wander the narrow streets, ponder the Moorish and Roman antiquities, gaze into the slender chasm, called Tajo de Ronda, and spend the night at the stately hotel. There, with a little urging, a porter will escort one to the room, which has been permanently retired from circulation, and stand in the doorway tapping his key while the visitor admires the splendid view from Rilke's window. The desk and the Victorian ink stand are not original. Only the wallpaper and fireplace, says the porter, were there in 1912 when the ailing poet wrote ''The Spanish Trilogy.''

Built by Englishmen in 1906 and renovated in 1963, the hotel has the elegance of a threadbare English country manor, but it is perched - like the rest of Ronda - on the edge of a 490-foot drop. The 90 rooms at the Reina Victoria are spacious, clean and fitted with modern plumbing and all have private terraces. A large restaurant overlooks the garden and valley beyond. The gardens grow within inches of the chasm. In one corner of the garden stands a life-size bronze statue of Rilke. It isn't the simple beauty of the Andalusian landscape that is so affecting but the contrast between scales; the human scale of the fragile hill town set against the planetary vastness of the rolling fields and the rim of mountains far beyond.

The old and new quarters of Ronda lie on opposite sides of the gorge, which bisects the town as though by an angry act of God. On the newer side, called Mercadillo, the streets widen and the appearance grows increasingly industrial in proportion to one's distance from the gorge, since the town began on the narrow citadel of the old town - called San Miguel - bridged the chasm and spread slowly northward down the hill.

The Reina Victoria and the nearby Plaza de Toros (bullring) lie on the modern side, which arose after the conquest of Ronda by Christians in 1485. A few decades ago, the carcasses of dead horses were simply pushed off the cliff by the side of the bullring where vultures could dispose of them. Today there are farm houses ringing the base of the mountain, and horses are required to wear protective padding against being gored. B ut very little else has changed. The bullring, the oldest one standing in Spain, still operates. For a few cents you may enter the ring and visit the bullfighting museum housed beneath the bleachers. The museum (about twice the size of the Rilke museum) pays homage to Ronda's heritage as the cradle of modern bullfighting. Francisco Romero, who codified the rules and introduced the cape and muleta, was born in Ronda, as was his grandson, Pedro Romero, the sport's most famous bullfighter. Founder of the Ronda School of bullfighting and perfector of its classical style, Pedro Romero is the namesake of the young torero in ''The Sun Also Rises'' by another Ronda visitor, Ernest Hemingway. Across the street, the Restaurante Pedro Romero serves a delicious garlic soup beneath stuffed bull's heads and photographs of young toreros making their last pass, or lying in state. In the dining room near the abyss, Ronda's role in the development of bullfighting seems strangely fitting. It is a town that enjoys tempting fate. The gorge is bridged by a stone edifice, the New Bridge (Puente Nuevo). New by Ronda standards, the bridge was completed in 1788. On either side of the gorge, narrow whitewashed apartments nudge the edge. ''As for the city itself,'' wrote Rilke, ''in these conditions it cannot but be odd, rising and falling, here and there so open toward the abyss that not one window dares look that way.''

Isolated on a narrow outcropping, the old town is Ronda's most interesting feature. The main street is so narrow at the entrance that outgoing traffic must wait to one side until incoming traffic has passed. For 15 pesetas (about a dime) you can park for two hours in the Plaza de Espana and walk into the old Moorish or aristocratic section. Though the chief small palaces of the old quarter have limited hours and the grand Casa de Mondragon frequently undergoes repairs, Ronda is a town to savor out of doors, strolling on foot through the tiny whitewashed passages, enjoying the company of the voluble residents and admiring the view. From the main street a walkway leads left along the gorge to the Casa del Rey Moro (House of the Moorish King) and the Renaissance Palacio de Marques de Salvatierra. Down below, two older bridges span the gorge and lead the eye to a tortuous stone staircase, once used by Christian captives for carrying wineskins full of water to their Moorish lords. An almost perfectly preserved 13th-century Arab bath is also visible from this perch.

Circling back toward the heart of the old town, past windows encased in wrought-iron birdcage grilles, visitors find a graceful plaza bordered by the Casa de Mondragon, the largest and most opulent seat of Moorish power, and the Iglesia de Santa Maria la Mayor. Though perhaps not as visually striking as some other sights in Ronda, the former mosque is so beloved by villagers that visitors are unlikely to pass the church's entrance without being forcibly led inside. There the amateur guides point out the Arabic, Gothic and Renaissance wings of the building, which evolved over three centuries (13th to late 16th).

Dinner starts late in Spain; most restaurants don't begin serving until 9 o'clock, but diners at that hour find their dining rooms eerily deserted, the larger crowd arriving an hour or so later. Better to take a casual stroll up Espinel Street off the Plaza de Espana on the Mercadillo side and join the old men in the cafes or the parade of window shoppers taking the night air. Despite the hour, mothers push their well-dressed babies along in strollers, and teen-agers race around in packs, rattling castanets.

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For day trips, 10 miles out of Ronda on Highway 56 lies the turnoff for the Cueva de la Pileta, a prehistoric cave nestled in the highlands. There the landscape changes strikingly in a short space. Just outside Ronda the road is lined with squat red cork trees, which have been stripped of their bark in patches. Soon the forestation falls away and a lunar landscape of scattered white rock rises on all sides. The cave is on the far side of a long valley with a lone farmhouse at the base. If the cave is locked, ask at the farmhouse for a key. The cave stretches a mile into the mountain in a series of stalagtite- and stalagmite-studded galleries. The cave is best known, however, for its prehistoric paintings of human, fish and animal forms, done 25,000 years ago. Some of the oldest-known ceramic finds in Europe, including pottery from the neolithic and paleolithic periods, were excavated from the cave. The weapons and human remains suggest that the cave was occupied as recently as 1500 B.C. Farther up the road that loops back toward Ronda, some lesser caves are visible in the steep rock walls.

Though his room at the Reina Victoria was not memorialized like Rilke's, Hemingway was also a frequent guest at the hotel and often visited the bullfighter Antonio Ordonez. Ronda, wrote Hemingway, ''Is where you should go if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone. The entire town and as far as you can see in any direction is romantic background and there is a hotel there that is so comfortable, so well run and where you eat so well and usually have a cool breeze at night that, with the romantic background and the modern comfort, if a honeymoon or an elopement is not a success in Ronda it would be as well to start for Paris and both commence making your own friends.''

Guide to an Andalusian Hilltop Where to Stay Rooms at Hotel Reina Victoria (87-12-40) at 25 Jerez Street range in price from $33 to $36 a night for two in a room with bath. Breakfast is $2.50 a person extra, lunch or dinner $8. A meal plan (pension completo) offers all three meals for about $16. Lunch and dinner include three courses and dessert. A typical dinner consists of ajo blanco con pasos (cold garlic soup with grapes), huevos Ronda, (eggs, pork and sausage) and a course of stewed lamb. For dessert try flan with chestnuts.

The centrally situated Hotel Residencia Royal (87-11-41) at 42 Virgen de la Paz Street is near the bullring and offers rooms with bath, private balconies and excellent views for $14 a night for two. Breakfast is $1 a person extra.

For those on a tighter budget, Hostal Biarritz (87-29-10) at 7 Cristo Street has rooms with bath for $8.50 for two. Where to Dine Besides the dining room of the Hotel Reina Victoria, there are several places worth recommending.

Restaurante Pedro Romero (87-10-27) opposite the bullring on Virgen de la Paz has daily specials for about $4.

Restaurante Don Miguel (87-10-90) at 4 Villanuova Street alongside the New Bridge offers views up the gorge and dinners priced from $4.50 to $8.50. Night Life On Saturday nights there is Flamenco dancing at Bar Meson del Puente, a nightclub that is built into the New Bridge.J. K.

JILL KEARNEY is a writer based in Southern California.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 14, 1985, on Page 10010009 of the National edition with the headline: A CITADEL THAT BRIDGES A GORGE AND THE YEARS. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe